Using the GNU Project Debugger for debugging

While developing any project, from time to time we end up struggling to understand subtle bugs. The GNU Project Debugger (GDB) is available as a package within Poky and is installed in SDK images by default, as was detailed in Chapter 8, Developing with the Yocto Project.

Note

In order to install debugging packages that contain the debug symbols and debugging tools in an image, add IMAGE_FEATURES += "dbg-pkgs tools-debug" in build/conf/local.conf.

The use of the SDK, or an image with the debugging packages and tools installed, allows us to debug applications directly in the target, as we usually do on our development machine.

The GDB may not be usable on some targets because of memory or disk space constraints. The main reason for this limitation is the GDB needs to load the debugging information, along with the binaries of the process being debugged, before starting the debugging process.

To overcome these constraints, we can use gdbserver, included...